Harris, Trump seek Arab American votes in Michigan

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally in Riverside Park, Friday, Oct. 18, 2024, in Grand Rapids, Mich. (AP Photo)

GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan – US Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump both sought support from Arab American voters Friday as they campaigned in Michigan, trying to lock down support in a battleground state that could decide the presidential race next month.

Trump was expected to visit a new campaign office in Hamtramck, one of the nation’s only Muslim-majority cities, and he will be joined there by Mayor Amer Ghalib, a Democrat who has endorsed him. Meanwhile, three city council members in the same town have endorsed Harris.

Michigan is one of three “blue wall” states that, along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, will help decide the election, and the diverse voting blocs are key to winning the state.

“It’s an election for president. It’s not supposed to be a cake walk for anyone. There are very important issues at play,” Harris said.

David Plouffe, a top campaign adviser for Harris, said Friday on CNN that he believed all of the swing states were still in play, but the key was zeroing in on voting blocs.

“We’re going to treat every cohort like they’re a swing voter,” he said. “We’re going to fight for every vote.”

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, is trying to capitalize on frustration with Harris over the U.S. backing of Israel’s offensive in Gaza and its invasion of Lebanon, following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel.

His allies have held meetings for months with community leaders in Michigan, which has a sizable population of Arab Americans, particularly in and around Detroit.

Harris, in comments following the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, one of the architects of the Oct. 7 attack, said Friday that his death provided an opportunity to stop the bloodshed in Gaza.

“My message remains, first of all, we have got to end this war,” she said Friday. “And I think what has happened now, with the killing of Sinwar, creates an opportunity for us to end this war and bring the hostages home.”

But the Democrat has been greeted by demonstrators protesting U.S. support of Israel in the conflict. During a closed-door meeting Thursday with students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she was confronted by one, based on a video posted by a pro-Palestinian student group on social media.

According to the video, as Harris was telling students she was invested in them, a protester interrupted her saying, “And in genocide, right? Billions of dollars in genocide?”

The demonstrator was eventually escorted out by university police, as he continued recording.

At her first event of the day, hundreds of supporters gathered in Riverside Park in Grand Rapids, on a carpet of fallen orange leaves under cloudless skies. A phalanx of Democratic governors — Maura Healy of Massachusetts, Wes Moore of Maryland, Tony Evers of Wisconsin, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Kathy Hochul of New York — took the stage before Harris.

Whitmer tore into Trump, calling him “a petty man who tells dangerous lies, and he’s always looking for someone else to blame.”

Harris will travel next to Lansing, where she will speak at a United Auto Workers union hall and promote the White House’s record of supporting domestic car manufacturing. Her final event of the day is a rally in Oakland County, northwest of Detroit.

Trump, who hasn’t commented publicly about Sinwar’s death, has his own event in Oakland County on Friday afternoon before holding a rally in Detroit in the evening.

His Detroit event will be his first there since insulting the city last week. While warning what will happen if Harris is elected, he said that “our whole country will end up being like Detroit.” The city spent years hemorrhaging residents and businesses, plunging into deep financial problems, before rebounding in recent years.

One challenge for Harris in Michigan has been union support. Although organized labor is traditionally a Democratic bloc, she’s failed to win some key endorsements.

Whitmer, a co-chair of Harris’ campaign, said in an interview Thursday that the expectation was always that “it was going to be a close election.”

“People are like, ‘Oh it’s so close.’ And I’m like, ‘Have you not been listening for decades?’” Whitmer said. “Michigan is a divided state. And that’s why we don’t write off the reddest of areas on a political map. We show up.”

Kent County, where Harris started her day Friday, leaned Republican for many years, and was won by Trump by 3% in 2016. But Biden won the county in 2020, and it has increasingly voted Democratic recently.